I started writing something a little bit ago and it was terrible.

Awful.

Really really, and I can’t emphasize this enough, really bad.

To me.

It was really bad, to me.

Because, I must contend, I am the only one who actually read any of it.

And if I’m being honest, it was maybe less than 10 sentences before I couldn’t bear to look any longer, before I was so utterly annoyed that I thought my head might literally explode, sticking in chunks to the screen.

I would have much rather peeled off pieces of my frontal lobe from between the keys than continue dribbling nonsense.

But here I am again, starting over with a new train of thought and a new strategy. I’ve decided to keep writing no matter how torturous it may feel to my fingers. Even if they start to metaphorically bleed.

It’s exposure therapy.

One of the worst things I could continue to do, which is something I am quite famous in my own head for, is only releasing out into the world the writing that I deem acceptable.

I have to think a piece is deeply profound before any set of eyes that isn’t mine gets to gaze upon it. I need it crafted, and molded, and shaped near perfect before I will even read it aloud to another person for final inspection.

And even then, I’ll find flaws.

Exhausting.

On the one hand, this is why I have a journal. For private thoughts and musings that aren’t ripe enough, or will never be ripe enough, for public consumption.

Even then, my journal is mostly recollections of my dreams and an unfortunate multitude of jumbled love (or lack thereof) letters that will never see the light of day.

But between nighttime stories and the continued confessionals, there are a multitude of pages that contain just three or four lines. Pages where I will begin and then promptly stop writing because I think what I have to say doesn’t sound polished enough to say it.

In my own private space.

Not polished and perfect enough for just ME to take in.

It feels kind of blasphemous against the art of writing. Something that is supposed to be creative, and expressive, and FREEING (read that again Emma for God’s sake FREEING), makes me feel trapped and anxious and confined.

Why must my safest space also always be the least caring and the most unkind?

I decided to try again because after the blow up with the attempted writing, I was laying nestled under my covers simply clutching a book, contemplating reading it. But with my racing thoughts and my horribly anxious mind, it might just be best to go to sleep, I thought.

Cuddling my book, of course.

The night before my AP Literature exam my junior year of high school I slept surrounded by all the books we had read that semester tucked neatly into my bed.

Partly, it was naive superstition. That spooning Hamlet and cradling Candide would be enough to soak in all the extra knowledge I would need for the test. By morning, my rhetorical analysis would rival the greats.

On the other hand, there was something comforting on a very basic human level, about falling asleep holding something not just plushy and made of fluff; but rather, something profound and other worldly. Something, ideally, bound in leather.

I think about that night a lot because as of late, I’ve been doing nearly the same thing.

Dozing off to sleep reading, is natural. Just about anyone will tell you that.

But purposefully clutching the book while you do it, is another.

It’s always been easier to observe others doing, than for me myself to do. I’ve talked about that quite ad nauseam. And so instinctively, when I can’t write, I read. In the hopes I’ll soak in their thoughts and ideas and extensive command of vocabulary and stellar syntax enough that I will turn around and make something beautiful of my own.

But tonight that felt cowardly. Sheepish. Even with a stack of half-finished novels on my nightstand, to read as an escape from my own prison, did not feel like a release.

It felt like purgatory.

So I came back and said perhaps nothing of any great merit. Maybe it doesn’t make too much sense, or it’s lackluster, you could even go so far as to finish and say “well that was boring.” It might be the least great thing I’ve written to date, but I’ve decided as a gift to myself — today, I am forgiven.

Because at least I put fingers to keys and attempted to articulate my jumbled little musings.

Even if it was for no audience but myself.

I can rest easy now — holding my book in one hand and a small bit of personal growth in the other.

And for you all, I wish the same.